gordianplotfandomcom-20200214-history
METHODS OF EXPRESSION PRECISION
PRECISION PRECISION. The calling two or more different Minus by one and the same name(aqua 'ware) equivocation is the source of almost all error in human discourse. He who wishes to throw duet in the eyes of an opponent, to hinder hie arriving at the real facts of case, will often have recourse to this artilloe, and thus So equivocate, and equisocaWota have attained their present secondary meaning. —Titze Precision requires the exact expression of the thought to be conveyed. It demands attention (1) to the Words employed, and (2) to the Construction, that in stating the thought the sentence may tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. (I) Words may lack precision (a) through the confounding of synonyms, (b) through the use of Equivocal Words, or © of General Words. (a) Synonyms are by etymology words that have precisely the same signification. The English language has very few such, begin and commence being perhaps as near approximations as can be found. But the term is extended to include words that have very nearly the same meaning, but express shades of difference in signification. To form an idea of the extent to which our language has been desynonymized, one has only to compare together our words derived mediately or immediately from the Latin, and those which they at first represented. Of these pairs there are hundreds upon hundreds ; and yet of not a single pair are the members strictly identical in impoit. Take for example acidand sour, cordialand hearty, crimeand guilt, divineand godlike, juvenileand youthful, lucidand bright, miserableand unhappy, ponderousand weighty, portion and share, quantity and deal, sufficient and enough. Where, moreover, two words, one of which is a material corruption of the other, are taken from a foreign source, we find them very far from being synonyms. Cure and care, engine and gin, paralysis and palsy, penitence and penance, phantasyand fancy, piety and pity, are instances in point. —HALL. How important these fine distinctions are is shown on almost every page of standard authors. Take the following instances from Coleridge : —'s face is almost the only exception I know to the observation that something feminine—not effeminate, mind, is discoverable in the countenances of all men of genius. — Works, vi. 384. Dr. Flennage said to Luther, "Sir, when you say that the Holy Spirit is the certainty In the word towards God, that is, that man is certain of his own mind and opinion ; then it must needs follow that all !mete have the Holy Ghost, for they will needs be most certain of their doctrine and religion. "—Lrafter'sTable Talk. Luther might have answered, "Positive, you mean, not certain. " —v. 278. I am by the law of my nature a reasoner. A person who should suppose I meant by that word an arguer would not only not understand me, but would understand the contrary of my meaning. I can take no interest whatever in hearing or saying anything merely as a fact—merely as having happened. It must refer to something within me before I can regard it with any curiosity or care. My mind is always energic—I don't mean energetic ; I require in everything what for lack of another wordI may call propriety—thatis, a reason why the thing is at all, and why it is thereof then rather than elsewhere or at another time. —vi. 503. While Purity demands that a word be in itself good English, and Propriety demands that it be used in one of the significations belonging to it, Precision still further demands that this signification exactly express the thought to be conveyed. Faults in Purity and in Propriety can be discerned and pronounced upon by the reader. Faults in Precision mast often be left to the detection of the writer himself, who should know better than another exactly what he wants to express. An extensive vocabulary is one of the requisites to precision (see pages xxvi, 347). Only by letting all the words allied in meaning pass in review before the mind, can one be certain that the exact word has been selected. For this purpose there is one aid so far superior to all others that its use should be understood even by young writers. This is Roget's "Thesaurus of English Words. " To illustrate its comprehensiveness and the manner of its use, suppose the thought in my mind is, "Miss Abbott's dress looks genteel, " but that I have just learned this adjective is no longer used in a commendatory sense (see page 373), and that I wish to replace it by a synonym. Turning in the index to the word "genteel, " I find the numbers "852, 875, " indicating the paragraphs that include this word. Turning to 852, I find this list Fashion, style, mode, vogue. Manners, breeding, politeness, good behavior, gentility, decorum, punctilio, form, formality, etiquette, custom, demeanor, air, port, maims, presence. Show, equipage, etc. , see ea. The world, the fashionable world, high life, town, court, gentility, civilization, civilized life, see Nobility, 875. Verbs. —To be fashionable. etc. Adjectives. —Fashionable, in fashion, in vogue, modish, stylish, courtly, genteel, well-bred, well-behaved, polished, gentlemanly, lady-like, well-spoken, civil, presentable, refined, thorough-bred, unembarrassed. Adverbs. —Fashionably, in fashion, etc. None of these words quite replace my "genteel, " so I turn to 875. Here I find : Nobility, noblesse, aristocracy, peerage, gentry, gentility, quality, rank, blood, birth, fashionable world. eta 8S2, distinction, etc. A personage, man of distinction, rank, etc. ; a nobleman, lord, peer, grandee, don, gentleman, squire, patrician. lordling. Prince, duke, marquis, earl, viscount, baron, baronet, knight, count, esquire, etc. , see715. Verbt—To be noble, etc. deifectless. —Noble, exalted, princely, of rank, titled, patrician, aristocratic, highborn, well-born, genteel, gentlemanly, fashionable, etc. , 852. No word here quite meets the want, so I turn to the gross references. Under 882 I find Ostentation, display, show, flourish, parade, pomp, state, solemnity, pegeantry, dash, glitter, strut, magnificence, pomposity, pretensions, showing off. Pageant, spectacle, procession, turn out. , gala, regatta. Ceremony, ceremonial, mummery, solemn mockery ; formality, form, etiquette, puno punctiliousness, frippery, court dress, etc. . Verbe. —To be ostentatious, etc. ; to display, exhibit, show off, come forward, put one's self forward, flaunt, emblazon, glitter ; make or cuts figure, dash, to figure. To observe or stead on ceremony, etiquette, etc. 44fectivea. —Ostentatious, showy, gaudy, garish, dashing, flaunting, glittering, Pompon; sumptuous, theatrical Pompons, solemn, stately, -high-sounding, formal, stiff, ceremonious, punctilious. Still lam am unsatisfied, so I tum to 745. This I find to be, as I might have expected, a list of titles, useless for this search. Under 852 the words given remind me of "natty, " a favorite with Thackeray. That will hardly answer my purpose, as it implies an attempt at effect, like "spruce. " I look in the index for "natty, " but do not find it, so I turn to the allied adjective "spruce. " This has in the index two references : "neat, 652; beautiful, 845. " I find that the words under 652 have reference only to the condition of an article, without reference to its material or form ; so none of them will answer. Under 845 I find these adjectives : Beautiful, handsome, fine, pretty, lovely, graceful, elegant, delicate, refined, fair, comely, seemly, well-favored, proper, shapely, IV ell-made, well-formed, well-proportioned, symmetrical, becoming, goodly, neat, spruce, sleek, bright-eyed, attractive, curious. Blooming, brilliant, shining, beaming, resplendent, dazzling, gorgeous, superb, magnificent, sublime. Picturesque, artiatical. Passable, not amiss, undeformed, undefaced, spotless, unspotted. Of these words " elegant " is so much nearer my meaning than the others that I look for it in the index. I find that besides the list just quoted, it is found under "tasteful, 850; style, 578. " Turning first to the latter, I have : Elegance, grace, ease, nature, concinnity, readiness, euphony. Acyeettoes. —Elegant, polished, classical, Attic, Oireronian, graceful, easy, natural, unlabored, chaste, pure, flowing, mellifluous, euphonious, rhythmical. These do not help me, so I turn to 850. The adjectives here are : In good taste, tasty (tasteful), unaffected, pure, chaste, clasidcal, refined, elegant, absthetic. I am beginning to think I shall be obliged to use "elegant, " but first I look up the words allied to two or three others of the adjectives already found that seem nearest to what I want Under " superb " I find in the index only 845, the list already quoted. Under " well-bred " I find a reference to "courteous, 804 ; " under "fashionable, " to "customary, 613 ; " and I look up half a dozen others, only to find that all hopeful lists have been already quoted. Had the adjective been wanted to express a judgment less positive, I might have been helped by the fact that besides each of the lists of words quoted was found on each page a list of the words of contrary meaning. Thus, adjoining the last list, 850, we have these adjectives : In bad taste, vulgar, coarse, unrefined, gross, heavy, rude, unpolished, homespun, homebred, uncouth, awkward, ungraceful, slovenly, slatternly, impolite, ill-mannered, uncdvil, ungentlemanly, unladylike, unfeminine, unseemly, unpresentable, unkempt, uncombed. Rustic, boorish, clownish, barbarous, barbaric, Gothic, unolaselcal, heathenish, outlandish, untamed, 878. Obsolete, out of fashion, unfashionable, antiquated, old-fashioned, gone by. New-fangled, odd, fantastic, grotesque, seeridiculous, 858, serio-comic, tragi-comic, affected, meretricious, extravagant, monstrona, shocking, horrid, revolting. Gaudy, tawdry, bedizened, tricked out. But in this case a negative form like "not ungraceful" will not express my thought, so I am forced to choose among the words before me. On the whole, if I must employ a single word, I decide that " elegant " will most nearly express my meaning ; so I write, "Miss Abbott's dress looks elegant. " It is not quite what I want to say, but it is as near to my thought as the English language permits me to get. (See page 347. ) So important is practice in finding and considering synonyms, that we give a number of exercises in which the pupil is to replace the words in italics by others that express the meaning as well or better. Example. —The two armies stood in order of battle. The two armies stood in array of battle. Courage is an admirable quality. The demand is steadily increasing. Plantsneed food as well as animals. Some years since I formed the prrnect of writing a history. The flies that I had observedwere all distinguished from each other inshape and color. Plants are thehabitations of insects. The victory wasannounced by a pealof cannon. The reflection of the moon is seen in theplacid lake. They traversed thelofty mountains that surround like a rampart the beautifulregion of Cashmere. The majority of mankind earntheir livelihood by hard work. The soldier obeyed the command of his officer withalacrity. When the evening mist enveloped the plain, a troopof wild ducks suddenly settledon the surface of the water. The con-. fusion was at length succeeded by profoundsilence. Birdspredict the changes of weather. Sea birds have places of rendezvous, where they seem to deliberate on the affairs of therepublic. How is this city, once sofull of people, now so solitary ? He attained a high position by industry and perseverance. Booksafford many resources in solitude. It can be demonstratedthat the earth isround. The action became general soon after it began. Manual labor was designed as a blessing. The sea-coast displays a magnificent prospect. The army was animated by the spirit of its commander. Man is the slave of habit. The sailorencounters many perils. The citizens, under their gallantgovernor, made an admirable defence. The king peremptorilyrefused therequest. The water belonging to ourglobe exists in various states. History is a record of public events. Charlemagnefounded various seminaries of public instruction. Someingenious experiments were made. Mungo Park. —While Mr. Park was waiting on the banks of the Niger for a passage, the king of the country was informed that a white man intended to visit him. On thisintelligence, a messenger was instantly despatched to tell the stranger that his majesty could not possibly admit him to his presence till heunderstood the cause of his arrival ; and also to warn him not to cross the river without the royal permission. The message was accordingly delivered by one of the chief natives, who advised Mr. Park to seek a lodging in an adjacent village, and promised to give him some requisite instructionsin the morning. Mr. Park immediately complied with this counsel ; but on entering the village, he had the mortificationto find every door closed against him. He was, therefore, obliged to remain all the day without foodbeneath theshade of a tree. About sunset, as he was turning his horse loose to graze, and expected to pass the night in this lonely situation, a woman returning from her employment in the fields stopped to gaze at him ; and observing his dejected looks, inquired from whatcause they proceeded. Mr. Park endeavored, as well as he could, -to make known his destitute situation. The woman immediately took up his saddle and bridle, and desired him to follow her to herresidence, where, after lighting a lamp, she presented him with some boiled fish, spread a mat for him to lie upon, and gave him permission to continue under her roof till morning. Having performed thisbeneficent action, she summoned her female companions to their spinning, which occupied the chief part of the night, while their labor was beguiled by a variety of songs. Gustavus Vasa. —This hero, who rescued his country from a foreign yoke, was allied to the royal family of Sweden. On the invasion of that country by Clnistiern II. in 1518, Gustavus Vasa was one of the six hostages whom he took to Denmark, and failing in detaching him from his allegiance to his country, he gave an order for his death ; but afterward changed it to imprisonment in the castle of Copenhagen. Eric Banner, a Danish nobleman, feeling compassion for the sufferings of the young Swede, obtained leave to take him to a fortress in Jutland, of which he was the governor. Here Gustavus passed his time in comparative satisfaction, until he heard of the accession of Christiern II. to the Swedish crown, when his heart burned within him, and he was resolved to use every d'artto recover the lost liberties of his country. He escaped to Lubec, but soon found that the Danes werein quest of him, which obliged him to assume the habit and manners of a peasant. In this disguise he passed through all quarters of their army, in a wagon loaded with hay, until he reached an old family castle at Sudermania. He dispatched letters hence to his friends, hoping to rouse them to an attempt for the recovery of their liberty ; but meeting with little success among the great, he next tried the peasantry. He visited their villages by night, harangued them at their festive assemblies, but without led, as they uniformly told him it was in vain for them to attempt to better their condition, for "peasants they were, and peasants they must remain. " Gustavus next determined to try the miners of Dalecarlia. He penetrated the mountains of that remote province, and was obliged for a scanty subsistence to enter himself as a common laborer at a mine. Here he worked within the dark caverns of the earth ; but the fineness of his linen soon led some of his fellow-laborers to suspect that he was more than what he seemed. By the advice of a friend, at whose house he concealed himself, Gustavusrepaired to Mora, where an annual feast of the peasantry was held. There, as his last resource, he displayed with so much nature, eloquence, and energy the miseries of his country and the tyranny of Chriatiern, that the assembly instantly determined to take up arms, and adopted him as their leader. While their hearts were glowing with an ardent patriotism, Gustavus led them against the governor's castle, which they stormed, and took or destroyed the whole garrison. Success increased his forces ; multitudes were eager to enlist under the banner of the conquering hero, Gustavus. At the head of his little army he overran the neighboring provinces, defeated the Archbishop of Ilpaal, and advanced to Stockholm. Chriatiern, who had in vain attempted to stop the progress of Gustavus by the threat of massacring his mother and sisters, at length put the dreadful menace into execution. The cruel deed animated Gustavus to a severer revenge. He assembled the states of Sweden at Wadstena, where he was unanimously chosen administrator; and after a variety of military transactions, he laid siege to Stockholm. Stockholm surrendered, and the Danes were completely expelled from Sweden. Columbus on the New World. —After a brief interval, the sovereigns requested of Columbus a recital of his adventures. His manner was sedate and dignified, but warmed by the glow of natural enthusiasm. He enumerated the several islands he had visited, expatiated on the temperate character of the climate, and the capacity of the soil for every variety of production, appealing to the samples imported by him as evidence of their natural productiveness. He dwelt more at large on the precious metals to be found in these islands, which he inferred less from the specimens actually obtained than from the uniform testimony of the natives to their abundance in the unexplored regions of the interior. Lastly, he pointed out the wide scope afforded to Christian zeal in the illumination of a race of men whose 461ds, Nar from being wedded to any system of idolatry, were prepared their extreme simplicity for the reception of pure and uncorrupted doctrine. The last consideration touched Isabella's heart most sensibly ; and the whole audience, kindled with various emotions by the speaker's eloquence, filled up the perspective with the gorgeous coloring of their own fancies, as ambition, or avarice, or devotional feeling predominated in their bosoms. When Columbus ceased, the king and queen, together with all present, prostrated themselves on their knees in grateful thanksgivings, while the solemn strains of the Te Deum were poured forth by the choir of the royal chapel, as in commemoration of some glorious victory. AVred and the Danes. —At the confluence of the rivers Paret and Tone there were about two acres of dry land, surrounded by swamps, which afterward became celebrated under the name of the Prince's Island. Here, alone and in disguise, he was sheltered in the cottage of a poor cowherd, who, in ignorance of his real dignity, was taught to believe him some fugitive chief whose circumstances required a temporary seclusion. A lively picture of the condition to which he was reduced is preserved in the well-known anecdote, which he himself was accustomed to recite in his happier hours, of the chiding be patiently endured from the shrewish wife of his host for allowing her cakes to be burned. To this retreat he gradually summoned few of his most faithful retainers, fortified its only accessible approach, and began to make successful excursions upon straggling parties of the enemy. But the first ray of hope broke from another quarter. About four months after the invasion by Outhrum, another division of his countrymen, landing in Devonshire under the ferocious Tibbs, laid siege to the castle of Kenwyth, into which the brave Ealdorman Odun and a few subordinate chiefs had hastily thrown therru3elres. In a desperate sally the garrison succeeded in surprising the camp of the invaders, and slaying Ubba himself ; an event which struck such terror into his followers that they left their enchanted standard, the Raven of Woden, in the hands of the victors. Retreat of Sir John Moore. —The British troops, under Sir John Moore, were now advancing from Portugal into Spain toco-operate with the patriots. In the course of his march, the British general soon discovered how fallacious and exaggerated were the impressions entertained in England respecting the condition of the Spaniards, and their ability or inclination to offer an effective resistance to the enemy. He continued his march, however, in order to comply, as far as possible, with the expectations of the ministry, and the urgent representations made to him ; till at length, having learned that Madrid had fallen, and that Bonaparte had quitted that city at the head of a superior force, with the view of taking up a position in the rear of the British, while another army under Souk lay in front. , he found it indispensable to make &prompt retreat. This he accomplished in the most masterly manner, though the weather was severe, provisions scanty, the inhabitants of the country cold and unfriendly, and a veteran army, greatly superior in numbers, pressing on his rear. This famous retreat closed at Corunna on the 11th of January, 1809, having been attended with the loss of many men from disorder, and the sacrifice of many horses from want of forage ; but without a standard being taken, or a single check sustained in action. The transports, on board of which the troops were to embark, unfortunately did not reach Corunna till two days after the arrival of the army. In consequence of this delay it became necessary to risk an engagement on the 6th, in very disadvantageous circumstances, and against an enemy greatly superior in numbers. In spite of this disparity, however, the French were everywhere repulsed, and compelled to retreat with the loss of two thousand men. But the gallant Sir John Moore was mortally wounded in the action by a cannon-ball. General Baird being also disabled, Sir John Hope took the command, and succeeded in embarking the troops, and bringing them off safely without further molestation. . How much depends upon the choice of words is shown in the following poem of Coleridge's, printed as it appears in his collected works, with interlineations in small type showing the changes of expression made in quoting it for "Dana's Household Book of Poetry. " COMPLAINT. Good, Great Man. How seldom, friend, a good great man inherits Honor or wealth, with all his worth and pains! and It sounds like story from the land of spirits a world If any man obtain that which he merits. When obtains Or any merits that which he obtains. RKPBOOP. Omitted. For shame, my friend ! renounce this canting strain I idle What wouldst thou have a good great man obtain ? Place, titles, salary, a gilded chain, Wealth title dignity golden Or throne of comes which his sword hath slain ? haw Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends, and greatness Hath he not always treasures, always friends, The good great man ? these treasures, love and light, good three And calm thoughts, equable as infant's breath ; And three firm friends, more sure than day and night— (fast] or Himself, his maker, and the angel death. Maker Death In the third line of the "Reproof, " for instance, all of Coleridge's words are more powerful than Dana's, because by expressing less intrinsic value they show more strongly the worthlessness of the objects referred to ; and in the next line, the substitution of heap for throne eliminates the implied idea that the great man's elevation is not only accompanied by but based on the woes of others. For the uses of or andand, see pages cxxi, cxxii, where it will appear that both the substitutions made are erroneous. (b) Equivocal Words are those that may be taken in more senses than one. "lie overlooked the transaction, " may mean either that he supervised it, or that he forgave it. "What I want, " shouted a stump-speaker, "is common sense. " "Exactly so, " replied his opponent. (See a similar example on Page266. ) "The Queen did not want solicitation to consent to the measure. " The word " want " may imply either that she did not desire solicitation, or that she was not without it. "Henry had been from his youth attached to the Church of Rome. " This may mean either that he had been fond of the church, or that he had been a member of it. "Exactly at eight the mother came up, and discovered that supper was not far off. " " Discovered " may be taken in either of two senses. It may imply found out, or it may imply made known, revealed. "The minister’s resignation, in these circumstances, cannot be too highly praised. " Does this mean his having resigned his office, or his being resigned to his fate ? " Retirement " would imply the one meaning, "submission" the other. If the former is intended, say "the minister's resignation of his office ; " if the latter, say "the resignation exhibited by the minister. " © Central Words instead of individual words are often affected by young writers. They are as fatal to precision as to every other quality of good style. (See pages 225, 240, 420. ) Those beautiful English words, boys and girls, are almost banished from our modern vocabulary. Boys and girls are transformed into juveniles ; workmen have become operatives ;and people in general are now individuals. These individuals, be it observed, are never dressed, but always attired or arrayed; they are never angry, but often irate ;they never go into a shop, though they sometimes condescend to enter an emporium, or perhaps a depot ;and when they return home they never take of their things, but divest themselves of their habiliments. Another practice with these writers is to substitute for single terms milk-and-water definitions of them. With them a fire is always the devouring element ; a man is an individual of the masculine gender ; a footman is a superb menial ; and a school-masteris the principal of a collegiate institution. —GasHes‘ The pet phrases "pet phrase" of Mr. Marsh himself of hack journalists, the euphemism that but lately characterized the American newspapers, are fast giving place to less affected and more appropriate forms of expression. It is only the lowest class of dailies that still regard "woman" as not an honorable or respectful designation of the sex, and it is in their columns alone that, in place of "well dressed or handsome women, " we read of "elegantly attired females" and of "beautiful ladies. "—MARsa. Coleridge says of one of his old school-masters : In our own English compositions (at least for the last three years of our English education), he showed no mercy to phrase, metaphor, or image, unsupported by a sound sense, or where the same sense might have been conveyed with equal force and dignity in plainer words. Lute, harp, and lyre, Muse, Mules, and inspirations. Pegasus, Parnaseus, and Hippocrene, were all an abomination to him. In fancy I can almost hear him now. exclaiming, " Harp ? Harp ? Lyre? Pen and ink, boy, you meant Muse, boy, Muse? Your nurse's daughter, you mean ! Pierian spring? Oh aye! the cloister pump, I suppose. " Coleridge adds that it is worthy of ranking as a maxim in criticism, that whatever is translatable in other and simpler words of the same language, without loss of sense or dignity, is bad. By dignity, he means the absence of ludicrous or debasing associations. —iii. 147. (2)Construction may lack precision through (a) Excessive Brevity, (b) Redundance, © Affectation, (d) Looseness of Thought. (a) Brevity is the soul of wit ; but it must consist in the compactness and exactness of the thought, not in a curtailed expression of it. It is excessive whenever it leads to lack of precision, by (i) the Omission of Necessary Words ; or by (ii) the use of Ambiguous Pronouns. Bad judges (and how few are not so !) desire in composition the concise and obscure ; not knowing that the one most frequently arises from paucity of materials, and the other from inability to manage and dispose them. —LANDOB. (I) The Omission of Necessary Words is illustrated in the following examples: I must now make to you a general assertion, which, if you will note it down and examine it at your leisure, you will find both true and useful. —BUSKIN. Harry eyed her with such a rapture as the first lover is described as having by Milton. —THACICEMY. meaning probably is, "as the first lover is described by Milton as having eyed his mistress with. " How to nurse and take care of their children long before she had one child herself. —In. There is never wanting a set of evil instruments who either out of mad zeal, private hatred, or for filthy lucre, are always ready. —SwnPr. He lamented the fatal mistake the world had been making so long in using silk-worms. —Swm. That the discoursing on politics shall be looked upon as dull as talking on the weather. —Freeholder. suggests another as before the first as ; perhaps to be would be better. I do not reckon we want a genius more than the rest of our neighbors do. —Swirr. His diet was abstemious, his prayers were long and fervent. — GIBBON. I am anxious for the time when he will talk as much nonsense to me as I have talked to him. —LANDOB. He says, inter alia : The correspondence alone which I have to conduct is at once extensive and demanding thoughtful attention, but I never have, nor ever will, allow literary work to interfere with the performance of pastoral. You never have allow that, doctor, the magistrate means, Mr. Editor, and he hopes, too, that you never will allowed it, never no more. "Literary work, " indeed. —Moorr. Friends and children who come after me, in which way will you bear your trials ? I know one that prays God will give you love rather than pride, and that the Eye all-seeing shall find you in the humble place. Not that we should judge proud spirits otherwise than charitably. 'Tis nature hath fashioned some for ambition and dominion, as it hath formed others for obedience and gentle submission. The leopard follows his nature as the lamb does ?. She can neither help her beauty, nor her courage, nor her cruelty, not a single spot on her shining coat ; nor the conquering spirit which impels her ; nor the shot which brings her down. —THAmERAT, Esnuind. DHIMBHINATIVES. —In spite of the necessity of frequently introducing determinatives in languages with few inflections, it will in general be found that a given period framed wholly in Anglo-Saxon will contain as few words, perhaps even fewer, than the same thought expressed in the Romance dialect of English. The reason of this is that the unpleasant effect of the frequent recurrence of particles has obliged us to invent forms of expression in which such members, though grammatically required to complete the period, are dispensed with, and we use these forms with less repugnance in Saxon combinations, where they were first employed, than in Latin ones, which are of later introduction and less familiar structure. Thus we say, "The man I bought the house of, " "The man we were talking of ; and we may with equal grammatical propriety say, "The gentleman I purchased the house of, " "The person we were conversing of ; " but we should be much more likely to employ a more formal syntax, "The gentleman of whom I purchased the house, " "The person of whom we were conversing. " Again, one would say, "I told him I had called on General Taylor, " omitting the conjunction that before the second member of the period ; but if we employed Romance words, we should more probably retain the conjunction, as, "I informed him that I had paid my respects to the President. " Although, then, the Anglo-Saxon so far controls all other elements that we may grammatically employ foreign words in the same way as native ones, yet a half-conscious sense of linguistic congruity usually suggests a more formal structure of the period, when it is composed chiefly of Romance radicals. —Mensa. (ii) Ambiguous Pronouns are so great an evil in composition that Bain says the clearness of composition depends more upon the use of he, she, it, they, than upon any other single matter coining within the scope of grammar. The word it is the greatest troubler that I know of in the language. It is so small, and so convenient, that few are careful enough in using it. Writers seldom spare this word. Whenever they are at a loss for either a nominative or an adjective to their sentence, they, without any kind of ceremony, clap in an it. —0oBBETr. Rewrite the following sentence so as to avoid the confusion of its. It is many times as troublesome to make good the pretence of a good quality as to have it ; and if a man have it not, it is te, n to one but he is discovered to want it, and then all his pains and labors to seem to have it are lost. On the other hand, it is sometimes needlessly avoided. Thus: During our stay in town one young man had his cheek cut open ; another his under-lip nearly taken off; a third his scalp cut in two ; and a fourth the tip of his nose so thoroughly excised that the end of his nasal organ it lay upon the ground. -HETIRY MAYHEW, German Life, ii. , 67. A STRIKING ImusTRATroN. —You say, "While treating of the pronunciation of those who minister in public, two other words occur to me which are very commonly mangled by our clergy. A One of these is covetous, ' and its substantive 'covetousness. ' I hope some who read these lines will be induced to leave off pronouncing them covetous' and covetioufmess. ' I can assure them that when they do thus call them, one at least of their hearers has his appreciation of their teaching disturbed. " Ifancy that many a one who reads these lines will have his appreciation of your teaching disturbed, as far as it relates to the Queen's English. But now for the changes which may be rung on these bells, as I have called them. The first of them, A. may apply either to words or to our clergy. One of these is "covetous. " I am sorry to say that the general belief is that there are more than one; but perhaps you know one in particular. However, my remarks interrupt the bell-ringing, and we want to count the changes, so I will say no more, but will at once demonstrate that we can ring 10, 240 changes on your peal of bells In other words, that your paragraph, of less than ten lines, is so ambiguously worded that, without any alteration of its grammar or syntax, it may be read in 10, 240 different ways I and onlAsie of all that number shall be the right way to express your meaning. The Pronouns. Nouns to which they may apply. No. of Different Readings. zz A, Mesa. . words, or clergy 2 II 13, Mem. . words, clergy, readers, or lines. 4. . . these 4 x by the above I = 8 C, Mena. . " " " . . . . these 4 x " 8 = le 0, May. . tbe. -e 4 x " " 83 = 128 • Mem. . GS 4 6 these 4 x " " 128 = 513 • • Mar. . " " 6 4 these 4 a " " 812= 2, 048 0, Mar. . words, clergy, readers, lines, or • hearers 5. them 5 x " " 2, 048 = 10, 240 —MOON. He Macaulay has a perfect hatred of pronouns, and for fear of a possible entanglement between " him's " and " her's " and "it's, " he will repeat not merely a substantive but a whole group of substantives. Sometimes, to make his sense unmistakable, he will repeat a whole formula with only a change in the copula —LBEILIR STEPHEN. OTHER INSTANCES OF AMBIOTIOUS PRONOUNS. —They historians who have talents want industry or virtue ; they those who have industry want talents. — SOUTHEY. His servant being ill, he had consented to allow his brother, a timid youth from the country, to take his place for a short time, and for that short time hews a constant source of annoyance. Life of C. J. Mathews. Lisias promised to his father never to abandon his Mends, —Quoted by CAXPBELL. My good lord often talked of visiting that land in Virginia which King Charles gave us—gave his ancestor. —TrucxEssx. The war then exciting attention to the American Colonies as one of the chief points in dispute, they mime out in two volumes octavo. —Parort, Life of Burke. Men look with an evil eye upon the good that is in others, and think that their reputation obscures them, and that their commend able qualities stand in their light ; and therefore they do what they can to cast a cloud over them, that the shining of their virtues may not obscure them. —Tmorson. There are soft men who allow the sex no virtues because they allow them no favors. —Fiztamte. The exercise of reason appears as little in them as in the beasts they sometimes hunt, and by whom they are sometimes hunted. — BOLINGBROKE. There is no popular Life of Bossaet to be found in France-Cardinal de Bausset's is the only onelife, and that is bulky and dry. —Bossuet and his Contemporaries. In any testimony (whether oral or written) that is unwillingly borne, it will more frequently consist in something incidentally implied than in a distinct statement. —WHATELY. Mr. A. presents his compliments to Mrs. E. Ihave got a hat which is not his ; if he have got a hat which is not yours, no doubt they are the missing one. —Honasox. Even in this short sentence we may discern an inaccuracy—why our language is less refined than those of Italy, France, and Spain ; putting the pronoun those in the plural, when the antecedent substantive to which it refers is in the singular, our Language. —Butra. Blair is manifestly in error. The sentence should read, why our language is less refined than. are the languages of Italy, France, and Spain. (See page cxxv. ) Find other instances of ambiguous pronouns on pages 45, 70, 240. A genderless personal noun is a marked want of the English language, as witness the following : When everybody all can ride as soon as they are born. —Stretzr SMITH. It is true that when perspective was first discovered, everybody all amused themselves with it. —Rusxmr. Each of the sexes should keep within its proper bounds, and content themselves to exult within their respective districts. -ADDISON. Each prayed for the other rather than for themselves. —Mas. Gamow. . When it took a twelvemonth's hard work to make a single volume legible, men considered a little the difference between one book and another ; but now, when not only anybody can get themselves made legible, through any quantity of volumes, in a week, but the doing so becomes a living to them, and they can fill their stomach with the foolish foam of their lips, the universal pestilence of falsehood fills the mind of the world as cicadas do olive leaves, and the first necessity of our mental government is to extricate from among the insects' noise the few notes and words that are divine. —BUSKIN. It is probably through the habit of using a plural pronoun when the antecedent is of both sexes that the plural is sometimes used for the singular when the antecedent includes only one sex. Thus : Each of the girls went up into their her separate rooms room to rest and calm themselves herself. —Mss. Gesxxxx. corrects the sentence as above, but the meaning is better preserved by substituting all for each cf. The use of64one 9 9as a personal pronoun, corresponding with the French On di tand the German Ilan8agt, is growing in favor, and is beginning to be characteristic of the best-bred speech. One doth not know How much an ill word may ampoison liking. —Muck Ado about Nothing. See examples on pages 4, 5, 9, 18, etc. Avoid awkwardness by substituting one for heorshe on gage 47. Reflexive Pronouns require care, as witness the following : If this trade be fostered, we shall gain from one nation ; and if another, from another. Which might help us to discover the conformity or disagreeableness of the one to the other. —Annisox. The greatest masters of critical learning differ among one another. —Spectator. Hereafter, when trains moving in an opposite direction are approaching each other on separate lines, conductors and engineers will be required to bring their respective trains to a dead halt before the point of meeting, and be very careful not to proceed until each train has passed the other. A writer in the Atlantic of the death of Dabney Carr, the brother in-law of Thomas Jefferson, says : Mindful of the romantic agreement of their youth that whichever died drat, should bury the other under the giant oak on Monticello, eta. , etc. This is rather hard on "the other "—and on Mr. Jefferson—and on the corpse. —Danbury News. (b) Redundance is fatal to precision. Looseness from redundance is specially apt to occur in speaking on difficult themes to the popular mind. Under such conditions, one is apt to explain, to qualify, to repeat, to speak in circumlocutory phrase, to experiment with variation. These easily overwhelm the thought with words. One then loses precision in the effort to be perspicuous. Style moves askant and askew in the effort to move at all. Sometimes the very struggle to be precise —the mind, in the very act of composing, being intent on precision—may defeat itself. Here, again, thought is overborne by the machinery employed to give it utterance. Writers who pride themselves on philosophical accuracy are apt to multiply qualifications, and circumstantial incidents, and secondary clauses, and parenthetical disclosures, so that no possible error shall be affirmed ; but that very strain after accuracy defeats its aim through the mere expansion of bulk and involution of connections. When a dozen words might have been understood, a dozen dozen may fall dead on the ear. Edmund Burke sometimes illustrates this. In one of his elaborate sentences you will sometimes find words and clauses selected and multiplied and arranged and compacted and qualified and defined and repeated, for the very purpose of extending and limiting the truth to its exact and undoubted measure. He obviously labors to say just what he means—no more, no lees, no other. Still, on the whole, he fails, because he is so elaborately precise in details. The thought is suffocated by the multitude of words employed to give it life. It is buried alive. To change the figure, you can divide and subdivide a field into so many, so small, so regular, and so exact patches, that the chief impression it shall leave on your eye is that of the fences. Similar is the impression of an excessively precise style. —PHELPs. It is needful to insist the more on the energetic effect of conciseness, because so many, especially young writers and speakers, are apt to fall into a style of pompous verbosity, not from negligence, but from an idea that they are adding to the perspicuity and force of what is said, when they are only encumbering the sense with a needless load of words. And they are the more likely to commit this mistake because such a style will often appear not only to the author but to the vulgar (i. e. , vulgar in intellect) among his hearers to be very majestic and impressive. It is not uncommon to hear a speaker or writer of this class mentioned as having a very fine command of language, when perhaps it might be said with more correctness that his language had a command of him ; i. e. , that he follows a train of words rather than of thought, , and strings together all the more striking expressions that occur to him on the subject, instead of first forming a clear notion of the sense he wishes to convey, and then seeking the most appropriate vehicle in which to convey it. He has but the same command of language that the rider has of a horse that runs away with him. —WHATELY. For illustration, on page 222 it is said that the printer's place will not be easily filled by his equal. It would be precise to say that his place would not be easily filled, or that it would not be easy to find his equal. But there is no reason why his equal should not fill his place easily enough. © Affectation is a prevailing enemy to precision. Young writers are slow to learn that the simplest, most direct statement of a thought is the best ; and they strive to array ideas that they recognize as commonplace in distinguished language. (See pages 193, 197, 349. ) A two-foot rule was given to a laborer in a Clyde boat-yard to . measure an iron plate. The laborer, not being well up in the use of the rile, after spending a considerable time, returned. " Noo, Mick, " asked the plater, "what size is the plate ?" " Well, " replied Mick, with a grin of satisfaction, "it's the length of your rule and two thumbs over, with this piece of brick, and the breadth of my hand and my arm from here to there, bar a finger. " —Punch. We laugh at the workman for employing thirty-two words and six kinds of measurement to express what would have been more exactly understood if he had said "thirty-three Inches. " But his blunder was due to ignorance of the use of the rule. Had he been accustomed to the rule, and had the circumlocution been an affectation of elegance, or an attempt to make the measurement seem more important, he would have been discharged for idiocy. Yet his fault would have been no greater than that of the reporter who writes that "the devouring element is devastating the capacious granary of one of our most influential citizens, " when he means that a fire has broken out in John Smith's barn. A writer in the Westminster Review discourses after this fashion : Another curious observation upon philosophic activity is, that the co-ordination of all the functions which constitute the whole intellectual energy of philosophic minds is preserved in its plenitude for only a short period of their whole duration of life. There occurs, and generally at a period of middle life, an epoch when the assimilation of scientific material and Its ulterior elaboration proceed with an energy more vigorous and more continuous than Is ever afterward attained by the same mind. This phase of phikeophical super activity is always succeeded by an intellectual phase characterized by lees expenditure of simultaneous powers. I do not say that this has no meaning. But what is its meaning? If I do not miss it in the volume of its long-tailed vocabulary, it is this, and this is the whole of it—that the mind of a metaphysician is more vigorous for a time near middle life than it ever is afterward. Why could not the reviewer say that, if hamust say a thing so obvious, and be content ? . . . That a profound mind doing honest work cannot make profound thought clear, implies intellectual disease or imbecility in the rest of mankind to an extent which is never true, except in effete or decadent races. It is more probable that some of our philosophical writers strain after the look of profoundness when the reality is not in them. That was a perilous principle which Coleridge advanced respecting the capacity of human language, that it cannot express certain metaphysical ideas, and therefore that clearness of style in a metaphysical treatise is prima fade evidence of superficialness. As Coleridge was accustomed to illustrate it, the pool in which you can count the pebbles at the bottom is shallow water ; the fathomless depth is that in which you can only see the reflection of your own face. This would be true if thinking were water. But the principle opens the way to the most stupendous impositions upon speculative science. It tempts authors to the grossest affectations in style. In the study of modern psychology, therefore, a preacher needs to be on his guard. We may safely treat as a fiction in philosophy anything which claims to be a discovery, yet cannot make itself understood without huge and unmanageable contortions of the English tongue. —PHELEs. Bombast, which originally meant the cotton wadding with which garments are stuffed and lined, is now appropriately applied to inflated diction, words that are big but empty. (See page 223. ) As one of the faults of over-civilization, an intellectual as well as a personal coxcombry is apt to prevail, which leads people -to expect from each other a certain dashing turn of mind, and an appearance at least of having ideas, whether they can afford them or not. —LEIGH HUNT. Ignorant and unreflecting persons, though they cannot be, strictly speaking, convinced by what they do not understand, yet will very often suppose each that the rest understand it ; and each is ashamed to acknowledge even to himself his own darkness and perplexity : so that if the speaker with a confident air announces his conclusion as established, they will often, according to the maxim omne ignotunt pro treaernifico, take for granted he has advanced valid arguments, and will be loath to seem behincUland in comprehending them. It usually requires that a man should have some confidence in his own understanding to venture to say, "What has been spoken is unintelligible to me. "—WHATELy. I have heard of a preacher who, desirous to appear very profound, and to make observations on the commonest subjects, which had never occurred to anybody before, remarked as an instance of the goodness of Providence that the moments of time come successively and not simultaneously or together, which last method of coming would, he said, occasion infinite confusion in the world. — CAMPBELL. See similar illustration at foot of page 85. Examples of Bombast are unhappily frequent ; the newspapers are full of them. Here are a few. (See also pages 306, 307. ) "Mr. and Mrs. D—, Boston, U. S. A. Best and most prosperous country under the sun. Thank God ! Just arrived from Chamouny on mules ; pleased with the mountains" This is an inscription on a Swiss hotel register. The mules could not write. —Golden Age. A young man at Elkhart, Ind. , has started a six-column weekly paper with the avowed object of "restoring to the Republic its wonted grandeur and prosperity. " You can't do it, young fellow. We tried for six years to restore the Republic to its wonted grandeur and prosperity by publishing the ablest paper in this country and taking turnips and slab wood on subscription, and never had money enough to buy a dog ; but of late years we have let the wonted grandeur of the Republic shirk for itself, and on the first of January we had over six dollars. —Peck'sSun. "Young Subscriber" wants to know "what is an organ ? " It is the opposition paper, my son ; the vile and truckling sheet through whose venomous maw, fetid with vice and festering with the loathsome corruption in which it daily wallows, the other party, blistered with the plague spot of political leprosy, sewers the noisome filth of its pestilential ideas. Gur-r-r !! That's what an organ is, my boy. Our own paper is a Fearless and Outspoken Champion for the Truth. You may have noticed that. — Bur/iszyton IllawkeYe Congress has been under bad influences, according to the Hon. Rollin M. Daggett, of Nevada, who, in a late speech to the House, remarked : 'Many-tongued rumor, the noblest evangel of calumny, has more than hinted that to the glitter of gold have been added the enchantments of beauty to warp the judgments of men, and that the corporate Aladdin. of the land, whose influence it is impossible not to feel, even in the inner chambers of this temple, have called to their councils both the sightless son of Ceres and theater-eyed cyprian whose home is on the heights. " Mr. Daggett himself is inclined to charitably disbelieve these reports ; but even his alleged disbelief is not reassuring, because this is its basis : "Even where it possible for me to believe them, over my shoulders I would bang the mantle of doubt, and, like the blessed of Noah'. sons, walk backward with it to cover the infamy before the world beheld it or our own eyes were blasted by the unwelcome vision. " The matter would seem to be one for inquiry, even if the sightless son of Ceres and the star-eyed cyprian had to be summoned to testify. —New York Sun. A young lady, Mies Alice Ilgenfritr, delivered an address on journalism to the Fourth Iowa District Press Association the other day. We find her essay in the Burlington Barokeye. She thinks that there is still room at the top, and that a neglect of lite, ary finish is one of the great faults of American newspapers. Instead of dwelling on and polishing up their ideas, men think more of making a speedy and advantageous sale of them. Miss Alice is a rather clever girl, but she most not dwell on her ideas too long, or . polish them up too elaborately. The result of too much literary finish is seen in such amazing passages as this in her address to the Iowa editors : "I am thankful for the iconoclastic spades which are rooting up old saws that have become stripped of all significance, like Cleopatra's Needle, by being removed front their natural surroundings. "—New TortSun. A finicky, fussy, round little man stepped up to the first waiter in a new oyster saloon In Sixth Avenue, and said : "Have you got any really nice, fresh, good oysters?" "Yes, sir. " "Not too fat, you know—but not thin, either. I want them just exactly right, and I want them perfectly fresh. " "How will you have them—half shell 4" "Stop a moment" saki the little man: "if you have got just the right kind in just the ri‘ht condition, please take half a pint of small ones (not too small, you know) and strain the joke off them carefully, leaving jest a little juice on them ; put them in a pan which has been scoured and dried, and then add a little butter (good pure butter) and a little milk (not New York milk, hilt real country cow's milk), and then place the pan over a coal fire and he careful to keep the pan in motion POas not to let the oysters or the milk burn ; add a little juice if you choose, and then watch the pan closely so that the exam moment it comes io a boil you can whip It off. At the same time have a deep dish warming near at hand, and when you see the first sign of boiling empty the pan into the dish. Do you think you can remember that ?" "One stew ! "the waiter called out. —Baader. The mellow light that suffused this valley at the dawn of the anniversary of the birth of liberty on Tuesday morning was reflected upon a canvas that was pure and virgin ; the brush of circumstances had never visited it, and it was rung up by the Divine Creator amid the din and noise of the universe—yes, it revealed a day that was bright with the contributions of nature. Here below everybody was in an apparently happy mood, and the spirit of good-fellowship seemed to prevail. The air was aromatic with the smoke and fumes of hot salt-petre, and the resonant sound of cannon was mingled with the roar of human voices and the shrieks of steam whistles. The streets were thronged with participants in Fourth of July festivities, and everybody abandoned themselves to a general good time. But there was a tragedy rapidly incubating, and it was to cast a gloom and terrible awe over the happy feature!' of the natal day of freedom. The bullet WOA to play its part and stab hilarity to the heart. Between two and three o'clock, while peace supported the sceptre, commotion and strife suddenly wised it and tore along Harrison Avenue. Guns were seen glittering in the sunlight, and a man was seen tottering across the street. It was Tommy Bennett who had been shot. —L64011116 Herald. Let it be written on every leaf that trembles in the Canadian and American forests, every blade of gram that waves in the morning breeze, every soil that whitens the sestet commerce ; let it blase from the sun at noontide and be reflected in the milder radiance of every star that bedecks the firmament of God, let it echo through the arches of heaven and reverberate through the corridors of our national temple, that the grand and sympathetic words of Queen Victoria which flashed on the wings of electricity over the Atlantic cable and hovered like a guardian angel over the bed of the dying President Garfield, were words of pearls and diamonds set in the necklace of international unity and harmony, hung around the neck of the Goddess of Liberty. —Comm A. B. Extacerr Now I haven't the slightest disposition to become hyperbolical, nor in any way to misrepresent or exaggerate the stated facts relative to the repeated annoyance to which I have been subjected, both by envious, jealous, and half-educated renegades and counterfeits, pretending to be of my own political faith and friendly to me, and the ridienlonaly insane and contemptible howlings of a partisan press ; but I do wish to say, that if there be an adult of ma/online persuasion on the face of this mundane sphere, upon whom attempts at persecution are being daily and hourly enacted, and by a class of men, neither represented by the honest, fair-minded, and hard-working mechanics, nor by the purely high-toned, reliable, and justice-dealing business men of this community, that very =favored individual is your moat obedient and humble subscriber. Throwing aside everything in the shape of political sentiment, and giving heed to naught but the spirit of justice and fairness among men, as they live, move, and have their being in the world, I desire to say that I have, at all times, endeavored to comply strictly, and have complied strictly, I flatter myself, with all the requirements of the law, in the discharge of my official duties, and that it is my solemn purpose to continue to do so during my occupancy of the public position with which fortune, fate, chance, or circumstances have found or burdened me. —Sasance Canes; in the Vicksburg Eferaid. The American people—and we are glad to tall ourselves that—are rocked on the bosom of two mighty oceans, whose granite-bound shores are whitened by the floating canvas of the commercial world ; reaching from the ice-fettered lakes of the north to the febrile waves of Australian seas, comprising the vast interim of live billions of acres, whose alluvial plains, romantic mountains, and mysticrivers rival the wildest Vendee a dreams that ever gathered around the inspired bard, as he walked the amaranthine promenades of Hesperian gardens, is proud Columbia, the land of the free and the home of the brave. —LegittlatorHAYWOOD on Gravel Roads, January 81, 1871. Affected Humor is akin to bombast. The inconvenience of being a recognized wit has already been pointed out (see page 129). Even genuine humorists sometimes lap over the narrow boundary that separates the facetious from the imbecile. Bret Harte, invited to appear before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard College, prepared and read a poem of which the plot was the inflation with hydrogen and the subsequent explosion of the skirts of a young woman who wanted ampler crinoline than her neighbors. Mark Twain, responding to a toast at an Atlantic dinner, represented the adventures in a mining district of three gambling cut-throats, who called themselves Longfellow, Whittier, and Emerson. The newspapers had already begun to quote this speech as his latest and wittiest, when it came to light that the guests had listened first with amazement and then with ill-concealed disgust, and that Mr. Clemens had written a most abject letter of apology. Where men like these fail, it is not strange that dabblers are often misled. For instance : Revenge was once man's highest duty ; revenge became his choicest pleasure. Now It has sunk in the scale of enjoyments to the rank of wife-beating and skittles. Take the case of Smiler, for instance. There is note better nor a more equable creature in existence. He can remain calm when his cook sends him up an uneatable dinner. The appearance of an unexpected milliner's bill is not sufficient to throw him off his balance. He is able to witness his MIMI playing havoc with his furniture without experiencing an inclination to commit murder. — Liberal Review. (d) Looseness of Thoughtis, however, the commonest cause of looseness of language. Rhetorical principles can do little for minds that express themselves satisfactorily in sentences like the following. He knew an Irishman who, overcome by heat, lay six weeks speechless in the month of August, and all his cry was " water. "— Quoted by SCHELB DE VERE. This extraordinary man left no children except his brother, who was killed at the same time. —Memoir of Robespierre. A deaf man named Taff was ran down by a passenger train and  killed on Wednesday morning. He was injured in a similar way about a year ago. —New Jersey Journal. Monthly school reports must be handed in on Wednesday of each week to insure their publication. On a bridge at Athens, Ga. , was the following : "Any person driving over this bridge in a faster pace than a walk shall, if a white person, be fined $5, and if a negro, receive twenty-five lashes, half the penalty to be bestowed on the informer. " A Mr. Crispin of Oxford announced that he sold "boots and shoes made by celebrated Hoby, London. " Mr. Hoby, irate, put into the Oxford paper, "The boots and shoes Mr. Crispin says he sells of my make is a lie. "—ALPOED. Carelessness often leads to expressions so exaggerated as to be absurd, or so loosely constructed as to be ridiculous. A manufacturing wire-worker in an advertisement invites the public to come and see his invisible wire fences. Of course, Everyone will be there, and for the edification of those who are absent, a full report will be found in our next paper. The applause at the end of the scene was unanimous, having been heard in various parts of the house ; there were few hisses. I follow fate, which does too fast persee. —DsynaN. Those who recommend the exclusive employment of either the simpler or the more complex words of our rich English, both err. —Popular Grammar. Such was the end of Murat at the premature age of forty-eight. —Airsotq. The command was reluctantly forced upon Prince Eugene. — ALISON. The first project was to shorten discourse by cutting polysyllables into one. —SWIFT. To Mthracus. —To be let, a windmill, containing three pair of stones, a bake house, corn shop, and about five acres of land, dwelling-house, and garden. —ALronD. I had like to have got one or two broken heads for my impertinence. —Swm. The editor of the New England Journal of Education says we referred to that committee matter at the American Institute in a "half-serious, half-truthful way. " That puzzles us. Is the half-truthful the same half as the half serious, or is it the other half? If it is the same half what is the other half, and how many halves are there to that ?—School Bulletin. Another small banner bore the device : " Journeymen 'Stonecutters' Society ; " on the back, " Eight Hours for Work. Right Hours for Sleep, Right Hours for Recreation, and Bight Hours for Rest. " Bull another banner had a similar inscription in German. Eight horns for work does not seem out of the way, neither does eight hours for sleep ; but to make a thirty-two-hour day might prove a difficult matter. Barnum's tattooed Greek sailor was on exhibition in Albany, and the advertisement said : He has upon his body 7, 000, 000 punctures, and itWPM all done by a female savage. The poor man lost a drop of blood and shed a tear for every puncture, and was the only one of twenty-four who survived the operation. The woman who did the tattooing worked six hours a day for ninety days before the task was completed. A mathematician of the Albany Express figured as follows : The woman must have given him 8% punctures second. Then, if he lost one drop of blood with every puncture, he lost, estimating the usual number of drops to a pint, and taking pint for a pound, 5, 8113 pounds. Or, to put it differently, just 880 gallons of blood, or a trifle over twenty barrels during ninety days. Tears don't weigh as much as blood, so bunching the two together, the gentleman from Albania must have lost about 53( tons of those fluids within three months. Barnum's agent retorted that, if the Greek had not been a wonderful man, he would not have been exhibited. Collocation may produce ambiguity in sentences that express the writer's meaning, but that are susceptible of another interpretation. Thus, a drug-store advertises pills as follows : "Try one box, and you will never take any other medicine. " Of most articles, this would be an unimpeachable form of endorsement ; but as the box of pills would make the guarantee good in case it killed the purchaser, the advertisement is ambiguous. This ambiguity may be intentional, thus : A familiar example is the word got, which may mean either was, or procured. Thus one boy says to another, with a grave face, "Fred got shot to-day. " " Where ? " asks the other, in alarm. "He got shot in a hardware store, " is the answer—meaning, of course, that he bought it. A man assured a storekeeper who hesitated to trust his companion for a purchase : "If he refuses to pay for it, I will. " His companion refused to pay for it, and so did the speaker—as in one sense he had said he would. A sheriff asked the wife of a Quaker against whom he had a writ if her husband was at home. She replied : " Yes ; he will see thee in a moment. " The sheriff waited ; but the Quaker did not appear. He was contented with seeing the sheriff; he did not care that the sheriff should see him. "Edward, " said Mr. Rice, "what do I hear, that you have disobeyed your grandmother, who told you just now not to jump down these steps ?" "Grandma didn't tell us not to, papa, she only came to the door and said, I wouldn't jump down those steps, boys, ' and I shouldn't think she would, an old lady like her ! " "The candles you sold me last week were very bad, " said Jerrold to a tallow-chandler. "Indeed, sir, I am very sorry for that. " "Yes, sir ; do you know they burnt to the middle, and then would burn no longer?" "You surprise me ! What, sir, did they go out ? " "No, sir, no ; they burned shorter ! "—Mail. Many popular puzzles depend on the ambiguity or double meaning of words and phrases. Thus we are told there was a man who had six children, and had never seen one of them. We are led to suppose that none of the children had ever been beheld by their parent. But the words may moan equally as well that one of them had been born while the man was on a journey, and he had, consequently, never seen that one. Another puzzle is this. There WMa poor blind beggar who had a brother : the brother died, but the man who died had no brother. What relation was the beggar to the man who died' We are apt to think that the beggar was a man ; but, when we think that the beggar might be a girl, the answer becomes quite plain. We are told of two men who met each other at an inn, and greeted each other affectionately. The hotel-keeper inquired of one how he was related to the other, who replied: "Brother and sister have I none, Yet this man's father was my father's son. " This is a perfectly plain statement, and yet there are few whose minds are clear enough to see at once that this jingle of words is only roundabout way of saying that this man was the speaker's son. "The New York Central fast express ran off the bridge at Schenectady to-day, " cries out a man, in affected horror, as he rushes up to a crowd of people. After many exclamations and inquiries, he explains that after a train has run upon the bridge it generally does run off again. "I hope, my lord, if you ever come within a mile of my house, you will stay there all night, " wrote Sir Boyle Roche to a friend. The proprietor of a phosphate mill advertises that parties sending their own bones to be ground will be attended to with fidelity and dispatch. In like manner a chemist advertises : "The gentleman who left his stomach for analysis will please call and get it. " Notice at the door of a ready-made clothing establishment in one of the poorer quarters of Paris : "Do not go somewhere else to be robbed ; walk in here. " "Furnished Lodgings. —A young man is open to hear of the above. "—Adv't. He must be the young man so easily seen through, because he had a pain in his chest and in his back. Perhaps it was he that testified in an application for life-insurance that his little brother died of some funny name. "I propose introducing some new features into the service, " said Rev. Mr. Textual. "All right, " remarked Fogg. "New features in that pulpit are just what I am longing for. " A lion tamer quarreled with his wife, a powerful virago, and was chased by her all around his tent. On being sorely pressed he took refuge in the cage among the lions. "Oh, you contemptible coward, " she shouted, "come out if you dare. " An Irishman's friend having fallen into a slough, the Irishman called loudly to another for assistance. The latter, who was busily engaged in cutting a log, and wished to procrastinate, inquired, "How deep is the gentleman in ? " "Up to his ankles. " "Then there is plenty of time, " said the other. "No, there is not, " rejoined the first ; "I forgot to tell you he's in head first. " This reminds one of the man who exasperated a painter by driving a close bargain for a half-length portrait. The portrait was delivered according to agreement, but proved to be of the lower half, stopping at the waist-belt. Dominique, when at table with the King, kept his eyes on a dish of partridges. The Prince, who noticed it, said to the servant, "Give that dish to Dominique. " "What, Sire, and the partridges too ? " The King replied, " Yes ! and the partridges too. " So Dominique had, with the partridges, the plate, which was of gold. A Philadelphia paper published the following paragraph : An enamored Philadelphian has been convicted of petty larceny for abstracting his adored one's carte de visite from her photograph album; the Judge decided that to deal "carte" was as bad as to steal a horse. A contemporary made use of it as follows, being careful, of course, to leave out the pun : A Philadelphia Judge decides that stealing girl's photograph from her album is as bad as stealing a horse from a turn. Here is an interesting piece of local information from Newburg: . One of our most thickly inhabited streets has had case of varioloid. A contemporary in reproducing this blunder says seriettsly enough : Such news should make other localities careful about vaccination. In a recent number of a fashionable morning paper there is a paragraph headed, "A Dangerous Cow, " of which it is said not only that it tossed several persons, but that "it plunged and tossed about the street in a formidable manner. "—Mom. A story Is told of an Englishman who landed at Dublin, filled with apprehension that the life of any loyal subject of her Majesty was not worth a farthing there and thereabouts. The Land Leaguers, he imagined, were all bloodthirsty assassins, and all that sort of thing. But it was his duty to travel in the land—a duty he approached with fear and trembling. Now there happened to be on his route a number of towns the names of which begin with the suggestive syllable "KU. " They were Kilmartin, and so on. In his ignorance of geographical nomenclature, his affrighted senses were startled anew on hearing a fellow passenger in a railway carriage remark to another as follows just afther ben' over to Kilpatrick. " "And I, " replied the other, "am either Min' over to Kilmary. " "What murderers they are!" thought the Englishman "and to think that they talk of their nominations so publicly I" But the conversation went on. "And phare are ye gain' now ? " asked assassin No. 1. " Pm goin home, and then to Mimeos. " was No. Ts reply. The Englishman's blood curdled. "Kilmore, is it ? " added No. I. "You'd bettner be comIn along %mad meto Kilumalle ! " It is related that the Englishman left the train at the next station. Constructions must be avoided that make it difficult to determine which of two parts of speech a word is, or what relation it bears to the rest of the sentence. See pages cii, 414. Thus, on page 191, "dreams" may be either a verb or a noun. The ambiguity is removed by substituting "to dream, " for "and dreams. " Care to avoid ambiguity from collocation must extend even to the possibility of mispronunciation. Once when Edwin Forrest was playing "William Tell" in Boston, Sarnem, Gesler's lieutenant, should have remarked : "I see you love a jest, but jest not now. " Imagine Forrest's feelings when that worthy declaimed : "I see you love a jest, but not jest now. " Lady (engaging footman) "You are clever at table ? " Jeames . "Yes, ma'am. " Lady : "And you know your way to announce ? " Jeames "Well, ma'am, I know my weight to a pound or so, but I hardly like to say to an ounce. "—Funny Folks. Some special words are so liable to produce ambiguity that they should be scrutinized in re-reading a composition. Any, when not modified by a negative, means "any you like, " i. e. , " every ; " but "not any, " instead of meaning "not every" means "not a single one. !' Hence, when the negative is carelessly placed, any becomes ambiguous, because we cannot tell whether it means every, or one, e. g. : No persone shall derive any benefit from this rule who has not been engaged for at least Ave years to a house of business employing not less than a hundred clerks at any time. This ought 'to mean, "employing at no time less than a hundred clerks ; " but any in such cases is often confused with some. Again, in I cannot believe anYfAMO you vaY. and I cannot believe anything you choose inlay, anything means, in the first case, "a single thing, " in the second case "everything. " It is quite impossible to determine, without fuller context, the meaning of the word any in such a sentence as— I am not bound to receive any messenger whom you may send. But sometimes causes obscurity ; and since it may mean, according to the context, "except, " or "on the other hand, " or "only, " mast be very carefully handled. As for the falsehood of your brother, I feel no doubt ;but what you say is true. As for the falsehood of your brother, I feel no doubt but what you say is true. I expected twelve; but (either only or contrary to my expectation) tee came. The following is perfectly clear, but shows the possibility of ambiguity :— There's ne'er villain dwelling in all Denmark But he's an errant knave. —Hantiet. —Annorr. Nothing less than is another phrase susceptible of opposite interpretations. Thus, He aimed at nothing has than the crown, may denote either, Nothing was lees aimed at by him than the crown, or, Nothing inferior to the crown could satisfy his ambition. All such phrases ought to be totally laid aside. —Cutrazta. . TOPICAL ANALYSIS. Precision. 1. The words employed, p. 399. Words may lack precision through: • The confounding of synonyms, p. 899. An extensive vocabulary, p. 401. The choice of words, p. 408. • • The use of equivocal words, p. 409. e. The use of general words, p. 410. • 2. The eangruetion, p. 411. a. Brevity, p. 411. • Omission of necessary words, p. 411. • • Use of ambiguous pronouns, p. 413. • A genderless personal noun, p. 418. The use of "one, " p. 417. . Reflexive pronouns, p. 417. b. Redundance, p. 418. C. Affectation, p. 419. Bombast, p. 421. Affected humor, p. 425. d. Looseness of thought, p. 425. Carelessness, p. 426. Collocation, p. 427. Some special words, p. 481. "Nothing less than, " p. 432 Category:Style